Democracy and social capital in Greece

Daskalopoulou, Irene (2016): Democracy and social capital in Greece.

Abstract

Democracy is the notion broadly used to denote a society’s commitment towards freedom and a better way of life. The minimum conditions that a country must adhere to in order to be acknowledged as democratic refer to arrangements between rulers and the ruled. In that sense, the key attributes of democracy are institutional guarantees referred to as either political rights and liberties or contestation for public office power and people’s participation. To the extent that these key attributes of democracy are shaped within a variety of different societal contexts, democracy is not a quality that either exists or not. Rather, different democracies exist depending largely on a wide set of societal characteristics. The research aim relates to the analysis of the relationship between democracy and social capital in Greece. In particular, we try to answer the question of whether we can speak of a “democracy – trust continuum” in Greece as suggested by the available literature, and if yes, where in this continuum could we possibly place Greece. An exploratory meta-analysis is used in order to sketch the country’s profile with respect to these phenomena and analyze the democracy – types of trust interrelationship as manifested in the case of Greece.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Democracy, social capital, social trust, Greece
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D71 - Social Choice ; Clubs ; Committees ; Associations; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D73 - Bureaucracy ; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations ; Corruption; H - Public Economics > H3 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O2 - Development Planning and Policy

References

Arrow, K. J., 1972, Gifts and exchanges, Philosophy and Public Affairs, I, 343-362.

Bitros, G. C. and Karayiannis, A. D., 2013, Creative Crisis in Democracy and Economy. Springer.

Bitros, G. C., 2013, From riches to rags or what went wrong in Greece, Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 38(1), 5-39.

Bollen, K. A., 1980, Issues in the comparative measurement of political democracy, American Sociological Review, 45, 370-390.

Brewer, G. A., 2003, Building social capital: civic attitudes and behavior of public servants, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 13 (1), 5-26.

Christoforou, A., 2005, On the Determinants of Social Capital in Greece Compared to Countries of the European Union, Nota di Lavoro, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, No. 68.2005.

Coleman, J. S., 1990, Foundations of Social Theory. Belknap, Cambridge, MA.

Dahl, R., 1971, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, Yale University Press.

Dahl, R., 1982, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy. New Haven, Yale University Press.

Danopoulos, C. P., 2015, Accountability and the Quality of Democracy in Greece, Mediterranean Quarterly, 26 (4), 110-131.

Dasgupta, P., 2005, Economics of social capital, Economic Record, 81 (s1), S2-S21.

Daskalopoulou, I., 2016, Social capital at the outburst of the economic crisis in Greece, 2008-2010, International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research, 9 (2), 79-86.

Demertzis, N., 2006, Trust as a social emotion, Science and Society. Journal of Political and Moral Theory, 16, 39-67. [in Greek].

Diamond, L., 1994, Rethinking civil society, Journal of Democracy, 5, 5-17.

Dotti Sani, G. M. and Magistro, B., 2016, Increasingly unequal? The economic crisis, social inequalities and trust in the European Parliament in 20 European countries, European Journal of Political Research, doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12126.

Fountain, J. E., 1998, Social capital: Its relationship to innovation in science and technology, Science and Public Policy, 25(2), 103-115.

Fukuyama, F., 1995, Trust. Basic Books, New York. Hardin, R., 2001, Conceptions and explanations of trust. In K. S. Cook (Ed.), Trust in society, (pp. 3-39), Russell Sage Foundation, New York City, New York.

Huliaras, A., 2014, The dynamics of civil society in Greece: creating civic engagement from the top, The Jean Monnet Papers on Political Economy, no. 10/2014, University of Peloponnese, Greece.

Jones, N., Malesios, C., Iosifides, T. and Sophoulis, C. M., 2008, Social Capital in Greece: Measurement and Comparative Perspectives, South European Society and Politics, 13(2), 175-193.

Kazakos, P., 2006, Social capital and collective action: Implications for economic structures, performance and reform. Case study Greece, Science and Society. Journal of Political and Moral Theory, 16, 107-138. [in Greek].

Knack, S. and Keefer, P., 1997, Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(4), 1251-1288.

Knack, S., 2002, Social Capital, Growth, and Poverty: A Survey of Cross-Country Evidence. In: C. Grootaert and T. van Bastelaer (Eds.), The Role of Social Capital in Development: An Empirical Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Lijphart, A., 1999, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Lipset, S. M., 1959, Some social requisites of democracy; economic development and political legitimacy, The American Political Science Review, 53 (1), 69-105.

Munck, G. L. and Verkuilen, J., 2002, Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: evaluating alternative indices, Comparative Political Studies, 35 (1), 5-34.

Munck, G. L., 2016, What is democracy? A reconceptualization of the quality of democracy, Democratization, 23 (1), 1-26.

Newton, K., 1997, Social capital and democracy, The American Behavioral Scientist, 40(5), 575-586.

Norris, P., 2001, Making democracies work: social capital and civic engagement in 47 societies, No. rwp01-036.

Pagoulatos, G. and Kastritis, P., 2013, Theorizing and assessing civil society: a review of approaches, The Jean Monnet Papers on Political Economy, no. 03/2013, University of Peloponnese, Greece.

Pantazidou, M., 2013, Treading new ground: A changing moment for citizen action in Greece, Development in Practice, 23(5-6), 755-770.

Paraskevopoulos, C., 2006, Social capital and public policy in Greece. Science and Society, Journal of Political and Moral Theory, 16, 69-105. [in Greek].

Petrou, A., and Daskalopoulou, I., 2014, Is Greece a Rent Seeking Society? A Research on the Relationship between Entrepreneurship, Trust and Institutions, Social Indicators Research, 119(3), 1495-1515.

Pichler, F. and Wallace, C., 2007, Patterns of Formal and Informal Social Capital in Europe, European Sociological Review, 23(4), 423–435.

Portes, A., 1998, Social capital: its origins and applications in modern sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1-24.

Portes, A., 2000, The two meanings of social capital, Sociological Forum, 15(1), 1-12.

Putnam, R. D., 1993, The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life, The American Prospect, 13, 35-42.

Putnam, R. D., 1995, Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital, Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65-78.

Quaranta, M. and Martini, S., 2016, Easy come, easy go? Economic performance and satisfaction with democracy in Southern Europe in the last three decades, Social Indicators Research, DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1270-0.

Rontos, K., and Roumeliotou, M., 2013, Generalized social trust in Greece and its association with demographic and socio-economic predictors, Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 12(1), 63-84.

Schmitter, P. C. and Karl, T. L., 1991, What democracy is … and is not, Journal of Democracy, 2(3), 75-88. Schumpeter, J., 1943, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London, George Allen and Unwin.

Voulgarelli-Christidou, C., 2016, Dangers of an urban crisis within the European Union: Fueling xenophobia and undermining democracy, Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 15 (1-2), 236 – 245.

Yamagishi, T., 2001, Trust as a form of social intelligence. In K. S. Cook (ed.), Trust in society (pp. 121-147), Russell Sage Foundation, New York City, New York.